A Pat On The Head

This photo of a Malagasy Teal, is from the final batch uploaded to Flickr taken at the Living Rainforest, near Newbury. Having returned with the 600mm lens and the sun lighting the humid rainforest environment perfectly, at first I couldn’t see any of the birds I’d come to photograph. When we’d been previously, there were both Malagasy and Ringed Teal swimming on the large pond area as well as resting on the side. This time, all of the birds were high up in the roof on pipes or, as in this case, tree stumps.

Having set up my camera equipment by the side of a bench I waited, and after about 10 minutes the birds obviously felt comfortable enough to start moving around, and as can be seen from the flickr stream, I managed to get some nice close-ups.

On our previous visit, and the reason for the blog title, I was “lucky” enough to be the target for a bird when it decided it needed to go to the toilet. It’s supposed to be good luck, but it wouldn’t have been for the bird if I could have got my hands on the duck in question – rare or not it would have gone nicely with some plum sauce.